The case in summary: • Camilla Holst from Svolvær is a student in Bergen. She says that the ticket home to Svolvær for Christmas is twice as expensive as the ticket to London.• The most reasonable alternative Holst has found involves train, plane and bus, and a journey time of 12 hours.• Holst suggests that students who study far from home could received an additional grant.• The prices of plane tickets vary over time due to variation in demand and competition on different routes, says economics professor at NHH, Frode Steen.• The airlines can offer different student offers, but this depends on demand and capacity. The summary is made by an AI service from OpenAi. The content is quality assured by news’s journalists before publication. Camilla Holst is in her third year of geography at the University of Bergen, and says that it has always been expensive to get home. But at Christmas it is extra expensive. – If I’m going to Svolvær for Christmas, it will quickly be NOK 5,500 round trip. She could just as well travel to London, she says. – You want to find cheaper routes, but it’s not that easy – The return journey to Svolvær from Bergen is about twice as expensive as if I were going to London. – I think it’s hard. If she had taken the most reasonable alternative, the choice would have been to take the train from Bergen to Oslo for nearly eight hours. She then had to fly for an hour and a half to Evenes and take a bus for at least two and a half hours to Svolvær. Then the price would be approximately NOK 2,335 one way. If she takes SAS’s option, the price will be 7275 return, with a change of flight in Oslo from Bergen, to Bodø, and then with Widerøe on to Svolvær. In comparison, the price one way from Bergen to London is approximately NOK 1,720 with SAS. Camilla Holst says she doesn’t get to go home as often as she would like, and thinks it’s crazy that she sees her family so rarely. Photo: Tore Ellingseter – I think it’s crazy. It’s hard when flying is the only realistic means of getting home. Due to the high prices up north, Holst cannot return home as often as others. Holst says that several people she knows who are studying far away have also thought about it. The problem does not only apply to those who are natives of Nordland, Troms or Finnmark, and who study in cities in Eastern, Western and Southern Norway. Consequently, this also applies to students from the south who study in the north. Paying more than twice as much as other students Holst believes that you could benefit from an additional grant when you study so far from home. – People from Oslo who study in Bergen, for example, have more travel options, but also have to spend much less money for exactly the same purpose. news has taken a closer look at that hypothesis. For students who will be traveling north for Christmas, it may be a good idea to have started saving a few months in advance. Photo: Kåre Riibe Ramskjell The starting point news has taken is a student from Bodø who is studying in Bergen, and who is traveling home with one parcel on the afternoon of 15 December. The return date from Bodø to Bergen is in the afternoon of 3 January 2024. All prices below are ordinary flight ticket prices. The airlines offer youth and student tickets, but none of the companies had this available when we checked. This is how much the return journey costs Photo: Stian Sørum Røkenes / Stian Sørum Røkenes/news Norwegian If the student travels with Norwegian, the outward journey from Bergen to Bodø will cost approximately NOK 3,120. The return will be NOK 2,570. The total will be NOK 5,690. For the same trip to Oslo, departure with Norwegian will cost approximately NOK 940, while return will cost approximately NOK 890. The total will be NOK 1,830. This means that a student who lives in Bergen, but is from Bodø, has to pay more than twice as much as fellow students from Oslo. SAS If the student would rather travel with SAS, the outward journey from Bergen to Bodø will cost approximately NOK 2,270. Return costs approximately NOK 2,920, and the total is NOK 5,190. For the same trip to Oslo, departure with SAS will cost approximately NOK 990, while the return will be NOK 890. The total will be NOK 1,880. Widerøe With Widerøe, both the outward journey from Bergen to Bodø and the return trip will be approximately NOK 1,400. The total will be NOK 2,800. On the other hand, if you are going to Oslo from Bergen, the outward journey will cost around NOK 1,550, while the return trip will be around NOK 1,020. The total will be NOK 2,570. So Widerøe is the only alternative that has approximately the same prices for a trip from Bergen to Bodø and Oslo, when news checked the prices on 16 October 2023. – This is important to me. I live far from home and I would like to have a couple of trips home a year. I am very happy with them at home and have a large family there. Why are the prices so different? Students in Norway can get up to NOK 137,907 in basic loans for the academic year 2023–2024. In the month it is NOK 12,537. If the plane ticket home for Christmas costs approximately NOK 5,000, this means that you are left with 7,537 which should cover all other needs such as rent, electricity, food, social activities and gym membership. Above is shown the percentage and monthly change in flight prices from August 2022 to September 2023. But why do we actually have such fluctuations? – When you sell seats on a plane, there is a fixed capacity that must be filled. The demand for seats varies over time, and then the companies, based on sold seats and historical demand on the routes, must constantly adapt so that they are able to fill the seats, says Frode Steen at NHH. – Then we get price fluctuations. So this is mainly due to the fact that there is great variation with regard to which routes, regions, countries and seasons we as consumers choose to travel in. Steen adds that the competition on different routes is very different. – Between Bergen and Oslo there are more departures and probably tougher competition than between Bergen and Bodø. In addition, some flight routes are thinner than others: they have too little demand for you to get the competition you want. That’s why there are no youth tickets left – I wish it were cheaper for me and our students to travel between all cities in Norway. But it quickly becomes difficult to do anything about, says the professor. – Then you have to think that some students should get a different type of support than others. One could ask whether Lånekassen could take that into account, but what counts most for the individual student now is flexibility. Because it’s good to be smart, says Steen. For those in Holst’s situation, she thinks it could pay to get an extra sum for plane tickets from Lånekassen when Christmas approaches. Photo: Petter Strøm – Travel early in the morning or very late in the evening, or on a different day than is optimal. Look for times when the companies have little business traffic, because then they are willing to sell the ticket cheaper. – Is there anything the airlines can do to equalize the prices? – They can create different student offers. – But when I checked the tickets to Widerøe, did the adult, youth and student tickets cost the same? – It must mean the simple and painful fact that they have sold so many seats that they are not willing to lower the price, because they manage to fill the seats with higher prices. – Is there anything that can be done politically to equalize prices? – No, I do not think that you should start regulating prices. You can organize a competition, or consider whether a student 1,500 kilometers from home should receive more support than someone who lives 3 kilometers from home.
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It is more expensive for Norwegian students to go home for Christmas than to go to London – news Nordland
